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Topic: Interdiction. (Read 5848 times)

If we're going to have FTL and warp/teleortation travel, then we ought to include means of stopping this, so police factions can stop pirates and what have you (Because it'd be cool to have a space version of COPS) and so fleets can stop reinforcements joining the enemy.

Interdiction ship reqsDestroyer minimum size (60%+ of destroyer dedicated to the interdiction system)Ship incapable of movement once interdiction has begunAll vessels in the area know they are being interdictedPower requirements of the Interdiction system limit the ship's offensive and defensive capabilities (IE, no shields)

Agreed. FTL destabilization ray/field/wave is very necessary. (Will depend on the type of FTL the enemy ship is using, of course)

Perhaps there needs to be trade offs for some things, such as the 'special' abilities (stealth, interdiction, etc) require turning your own shields off. I like having to make tactical decisions that will impact me as well as the ship I am attacking.*I could stop the enemy transport from getting away, but I would leave myself temporarily vulnerable to the remaining fighters in the system if I do*That being said, it will probably come down to the kinds of engagements that we see most often. If it is mostly 1v1, interdiction will become VERY powerful. Likewise, if we are always in fleets, interdiction will be less useful (but still a handy tool to have).

It is choices like these that will make BR's gameplay great, and not just another space sim...

I'd like to take a page from EoW here. An interdictor ship would have the following requirements (unless it was restrictively large, see below)

The ship in question woulod require a huge power generator to power the field (Thus restricting it's armaments/speed etc)The ship, once deployed, would no longer be capable of movement.The enemy (And all other ships in the area) Would know exactly where this particular ship was as soon as it activated. (Computers would say warp impossible, obstruction at <coords>)This ship works both ways, you stop enemy reinforcements, but you also stop your own.

Sure, you could big a super huge Interdictor and kit it with a lot of guns, but it still can't move. This'll keep the size down.

That being said, it will probably come down to the kinds of engagements that we see most often. If it is mostly 1v1, interdiction will become VERY powerful. Likewise, if we are always in fleets, interdiction will be less useful (but still a handy tool to have).

In a 1v1 the only advantage would be surprise and an inability for the foe to retreat without disabling the system. However the other ship would probably outgun you due to not spending weight on support system.

In a fleet action you can ambush the fleet (always fun) or have several set up so you can ambush any reinforcements along likely routes as well as the fact you could dump these things on lightweight hulls and then have you're main ships not have to waste weight on the system either...

All in all I think they'd be much more useful as things scaled up rather than vice versa

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"God damnit why does everything have to be in sweedish? I don't understand shit"-Davee

<Strait_Raider> "The Big 4 could be equipped with a Bren gun or a 3 inch mortar..."<Strait_Raider>That's like... my two favorite things. Put together. That's like... Kate Upton in a Tiger

I think we should distinguish between FTL jammer that just stop people from jumping out, devices stoping incoming and outgoing FTL and some sort of device to pull people out of FTL.

For having some proper battles it should be really hard to flee from a battle with FTL.That could be done by having cheap systems that use not much energy and can be installed on every ship. This systems could make loading the jump engine take longer and use more energy. So instead loading it's jump engine in 10 seconds and using 50 TW the enemy ship would need 100 seconds and 70 TW (More Power over longer time)This way you can still flee from a battle but it's much harder and a great risk. (High energy consume)

Stoping incoming FTL should be much harder then stoping outgoing FTL and use very costly and energy hungry systems that could have the disadvantages mentioned. (No shields etc.)While pulling something out of FTL should need an even more powerfull ship and pulling out bigger ships should be harder.

Stopping it coming or going might be easier than you think. A computer has to check the route travelled against known stars and obstructions, you hit one and it's game over. If an Interdictor created a gravity well (or faked a big enough one on sensors) Then no computer would allow an FLT jump anywhere near it or out of it.

I would still think the Interdictor should be able to move when disabling. If it can track a moving target (or potentially targets, if sophisticated enough), then it would be able to move itself. Power requirements on interdiction would practically prevent weapons or movement, but they would still be available, especially in cases of large ship size/ large power capacity.

Provided Interdiction is by field generation:Incoming ships wouldn't know (based on physics) that there was an interdictor in the system, so how would they be affected by it? I would think that some kinds of FTL could 'un-warp' practically whenever they want, but wouldn't be able to escape once in the field. I don't know the devs will explain it, because they have siad that there will be multiple forms of FTL, but for the traditional 'hyperdrive,' this would make sense tactically.

*Hyperdrive needs to generate coordinates to be able to jump. Safeguards in the system prevent it from jumping blindly, and interdiction could 'scramble' the ship's abilities to generate coordinates.*

Provided Interdiction is a by-product of a ray/wave:Thinking along the lines of a Star Wars style ion-cannon, Interdiction would be a by-product of hitting the ship with something akin to an emp--disabling functions that require power (either locally or globally to the ship). In this case, the ship would need to restart to be able to regain those systems.

I'm going to work with an assumption here that the more massive a ship we have the larger the FTL drive we will need. For the sake of discussion, let's assume there are 10 classes of FTL cores.

We could then have a similar series of ten interdiction cores, each of which provides interdiction ability against a higher class of FTL drive. Range of interdiction might increase with each level as well and perhaps have the level of interdiction power could decrease with each range as well.

In this manner, a frigate-size interdiction vessel could pull most fighters, corvettes and other frigates out of warp but usually nothing larger.

A blockade running ship could then fit a higher class of FTL drive than it strictly needs in order to provide better security against interdiction.

I would also suggest that interdiction require a VAST amount of space and energy, such that an interdiction vessel is at a huge disadvantage against a regular vessel of the same size, and has almost no fighting power when interdiction is actually running. If the power draw were made high enough, the vessel might not be able to maneuver or fire its weapons at all during interdiction unless it had an interdiction core that was relatively small compared to the size of the ship itself.

I think this would discourage the overuse of interdiction devices, which I think could be incredibly annoying. It pushes interdiction into more of a specialist role, generally run by groups of players rather than solo players. The interdiction vessel remains a powerful tool, but one that needs backup in order to work.

I'm not sure I like that people keep trying to impose extra restrictions on things. Given the modular nature of a block game, it would make the most sense for powerful tools to require a lot of resources to run.

As some people have suggested, having a huge power draw would simply mean that to use the device you're going to have to make sacrifices. It'll keep with realism too.

I'm not sure I like that people keep trying to impose extra restrictions on things. Given the modular nature of a block game, it would make the most sense for powerful tools to require a lot of resources to run.

As some people have suggested, having a huge power draw would simply mean that to use the device you're going to have to make sacrifices. It'll keep with realism too.

we have to put limits at some point. its nice to think we will be able to build 100km long ships, but at the same time thats something that the game might not even be able to handle. putting things like deminishing returns after some point will help keep ship sizes as well as functions manageable and help more clearly define roles. sometimes it takes a bit more then power requirment for that, unless you want almost everything tied to your reactor size/output. which isent very intresting IMO

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would you buy a toaster shaped like an f22 with an eject button on it? cause thats what i'm going for.

I'm fine with a limit to ship size, I'd rather have a game that doesn't crash than a 100km long ship, but based off the current build of the game, it would be overly complicated, and fairly pointless to have effects vary logarithmically.You place cubes. If each 'functional' cube has a fixed power input or output, depending on if it's on or off, or something, everything is a lot easier. It gives everyone more freedom, requires less computation by the game engine, and by having balanced power usage to effect, it will prevent the creation of a god-like ship.

Having linear power usage to effect would force people to either fill a specialised role, have a balanced ship, or build a really, really big beast.

As a cubic game, it would make the most sense to have each and every 'reactor' block produce a set amount of power, and every 'interdiction' block use a set amount of power and produce a set effect. Then you'd just have the game count the interdiction blocks in an entity, times it by a set amount and hey presto! you've got the volume of the area of effect. That way a small field will be relatively cheap, but it's going to take 8 times as many blocks to have twice the area of effect.

Then everything has it's pro's and cons and people will have to balance:Cost to acquire the block,Space of the block,Power Requirements,and effect of the block.

I'd rather have FTL only be disabled by damage - otherwise the implications are... frustrating and kind of dull, in my mind. Raiders would all travel with FTL disabling devices (in whatever form) so that they could attack lone ships without any worry of them escaping, rather than having to make some well placed shots on the ship before it has a chance to jump/while it's powering up FTL. Same can be said of any large scale battle. Instead of having to disable specific ships to capture them as a reward, everyone would just fight to the death because you couldn't escape.

Maybe I'm just not following the same train of thought - it just seems to make battle strategy too simple and cookie cutter.

If ships can have their FTL be disabled (as is often the case in science fiction shows) then the problems might take care of themselves. The possibility of following people into FTL could also be used to balance too many escaping ships.

I always imagined these things as stupid expensive, making their use rare but niche. So while you won't see them on every battle, someone who really wants to get you might just find the funding to deploy one.